Hacker

Are you sure you guys aren't talking about an SSBI? Or some other obscure clearance-related abbreviation like DCID 1/14? SCI is required for very specific reasons. I can't think of any type of access like that which a UPT student (or UPT graduate) would need.

I know a number of guys who have used the long weekend ATP courses. Yes, they're totally legit, and many times they cator to military guys. The options generally are: ATP checkride only ATP written and checkride FE and ATP written, ATP checkride They all cost between $1K and $2K, depending on where they are and which of the options you want.

It's been that way forever. My dad, who is a Korean War-era vet said the same thing about when he was on active duty.

Correction...in my post above, the wording implies that the V device specifies the difference between heroism and achievement for the DFC and Air Medal, and that's not what I meant. What I meant was that the DFC and AM are both medals that, like the Bronze Star, can be awarded for either heroism or merit, and that it says which it was awarded for on the certificate. Just re-read it and wanted to clarify.

Exactly my point. Either it's awarded for heroic or meritorious achievement. The citation itself specifies if the medal was awarded for heroism or merit. The V device on the ribbon highlights the difference when it's worn. The same thing goes for a DFC and an Air Medal. I don't disagree that medals are given away like candy these days, but if you know what you're looking for you can see past the medal-hounds and ID the guys who were really out there doing the J-O-B and getting their proper credit.

Anyone with any sort of SA can tell the difference in value between a BSM and a BSV.

Personally, I think it's a pretty good idea...but not for the whiny-assed reasons that the pogue Captain in the other article mentioned. I don't mind seeing the guys who are on the ground get their due...and I don't feel particularly slighted as a pilot if I'm not eligible for it from the air. If I were an ALO, though, and I was excluded from being eligible I'd be f*cking pissed.

If that's directed toward me, the reason I piped up is because there are a lot of young punks who are looking to the more experienced guys to help separate whatever party line they're getting in UPT from the real word in the CAF. Do I care what you do? Nope. I do care if people are presenting personal techniques that could give kids the wrong impression. In this case...scoffing glove use...is the wrong message to send to a younger pilot who doesn't have the experience necessary to exercise their own judgment.

Same. Screws with the dexterity.

Brother, you are spewing a lot of trash for someone who isn't even in the club yet. There are a metric sh*t load of USAF members who have fought with every drop of ferocity, aggressiveness, and bravery since Korea. The enemy sure as hell flew in Vietnam and Desert Storm -- and oh, by the way, those enemies killed USAF personnel who were fighting like hell to accomplish the mission. To dismiss their accomplishments as you have done is just ignorant. I am guessing that you have never personally been shot at by a SAM. If you had, you would not have the unbelievably foolish opinion that staring down the barrel of a missile guiding on your aircraft is less warrior-like than having bullets whiz by your skull while carrying an M-16. How much experience do you have pulling the trigger against a living human on the other end, anyway?

As the Intel officer at my Base X once said... "CNN is just information. 'Intel' is information plus analysis."

Introduction to Bomber Fundamentals, right? :rolleyes:

How did you have a 10-year ADSC? You were one of my IPs, bro, and I only have an 8 year ADSC.

Have you actually looked at your "permanent record"? There are a lot of retarded awards that are given out (CGO of the quarter, etc) which will never be documented in your personnel folder unless you make sure they're specifically documented on an OPR or Training Report. If you get something that is documented on an OPR, then it becomes part of your personnel file. Otherwise, if it doesn't appear on the Training Report or isn't a Medal, then it DOES NOT go in your record.

If you don't put something to the effect of "I want to go to IDE, then within 5 years become a DO, and eventually a Squadron CC" you're probably not going to get hooked up by the assignments team. It's a world of haves and have-nots.

Where did you get Shipley's name from? The owner and pilot was Wyatt Fuller.

No. Since the F-15E is not a two-pilot-required aircraft, you cannot log SIC time. WSOs with a Multiengine rating can log PIC time when they are actually flying the aircraft (e.g. sole manipulator of the controls), but that is it.

It's called an "Experimental Type Rating", or ETR.

This is the bottom line...PIC only if you signed for it.

I was also up in the vicinity of Tikrit that night, several hours earlier. Rainman Johnson is right...it sucked. I was flying with an ADI up the entire time I was in that area because the vis was terrible.

It wasn't "briefed" as anything...it was officially called a "combat loss" by the investigating board with no further information added about what happened. Many pilots who were there, myself included, think that the cause of the crash was spatial-d, but that's pure speculation based on a lot of circumstantial evidence. The fact of the matter is that it just as easily could have been AAA or the like that caused them to crash because we don't have anywhere near all the information needed to really make a determination. There was a similar crash in Desert Storm where a group of F-15Es was threat reacting while low altitude and everyone similarly thinks that they reacted themselves into the dirt. [ 06. July 2006, 04:55: Message edited by: Hacker ]

First off, DO NOT GIVE UP! Next, separate in your mind for a little while that flying and fun are even similar activities. Part of what you're learning there at UPT is how to deal with this stress mixed in with aviation. It is designed to teach you how to compartamentalize your studies. How to concentrate on the closest, hottest target. How to look at 500 pages of study material and figure out what parts to read and which parts are chaff. As has been said, GO TO A BUDDY and get some assistance with studying. "Stump the dummy" is about the best learning tool I can think of...sit around with a brew and have a buddy open the MQF or the -1 or 11-217 or whatever you're studying and ask questions. So what if you get none right the first time through...eventually you'll get it, and he'll get sharper by asking the questions, too. Have him help you chair-fly your next sortie in the syllabus. If you're further ahead in the syllabus than him, help him chair fly a sortie -- you'll sharpen your skills by having to teach it to someone else. Back to my original point...DON'T GIVE UP!!! UPT is a marathon and not a sprint. Keep the end goal -- wings -- in mind at all times, and be patient.

Okay, so I gotta ask...where's the URL to this one?

I work with the same guy that 10MAN does and have flown with him for the last 3 years. I think he catches more grief from the students about being on TV than from any of his fellow IPs. His video always makes for good fodder in student graduation videos. The difference with the AFP thing, though, is that those guys HAD NO CHOICE in the matter. They didn't get to decide if they wanted to participate in the show or not. Everyone with a website HAS a choice.

You know, I have to say that it was a different world 9-10 years ago when I started my website. When I was initially selected to go to UPT (from active duty), I was hungry for any information about the program that I could get my hands on. At the time, unfortunately, there was NOTHING out there. I couldn't find a book or a website anywhere that had any kind of detailed information about UPT. Again, this is long before there was such a thing as 'blogging', and 56K dialup internet was the heat. So, I decided that since the info wasn't anywhere to be found that I would create that resource, believing that if I were seeking that kind of information on UPT surely there were other guys out there that wanted to know the same thing. About that time I found Dave Werner's "Journal of a Student Naval Aviator" website. As far as I can tell, his website was really the first to have a military pilot training journal on the internet. I liked his site, so I blatantly ripped off the idea and started up one to chronicle the USAF side of training. I have had literally hundreds of guys tell me they read my journal, followed the progress, and learned a lot. The nay-sayers can talk until they are blue in the face that no UPT students benefit from reading some dude's journal, but I believe otherwise because I had MANY, MANY people tell me otherwise. So...that's why I did it. It wasn't for some narcissistic pleasure -- just to be a resource for a niche that didn't have one. Personally, I don't get the blog thing. That doesn't appeal to me in any way, either writing them or reading them. There are enough guys in my line of work who pontificate on every point as if they alone were able to solve the world's problems, so I don't need to read that kind of diatribe on the internet, too. Again, in retrospect if I had it all to do over, I would NOT keep a UPT journal on the internet. Although there are some altruistic benefits as well as some purely personal benefits, NONE of those benefits outweighs the risks of doing it. UPT studs, I'm speaking based on experience here. You don't see the big picture from where you're sitting, but several assignments down the road you may think differently. I keep hearing folks say, "well such-and-such says he's never run into any problems because of his journal." Well, for one I think that's bullsh*t. Lance Ferguson may not have had any repercussions from his blog, but you can bet your ass that his IPs were reading it and joking about it behind closed doors. I know...I was one of his IPs. BESIDES, so what if one or two or three guys have had no problems. I'm here as an example of someone who DID have a problem because of it. Why, why, why would anyone ever risk going through what I did for something with no tangible benefit like keeping an online journal? Even if there was only a one-in-100 chance of having a problem, you're still not very smart for risking it. Use some of that good ORM common sense they've been teaching you in UPT and check out the risks vs the rewards. There are lots of risks and only few rewards. As an aside, I absolutely WOULD keep a personal journal of "there I was" stories while going through training. Recently I converted my logbook over to a digital spreadsheet, and I was able to take some of that stuff and cut-and-paste it into the remarks section for the flights. It made for some great memories of some of the cool sh*t I've done for Uncle Sam. [ 25. June 2006, 19:50: Message edited by: Hacker ]